Seizing an opportunity between lockdowns last year, I had brought another long stay in France to a close and returned to London as a Briton. After several months in the UK, I have now made the opposite journey as a French citizen.
There is nothing too dramatic about this change of status. No one has stripped me of the nationality of my birth. As the official at the French consulate in London put it – when she presented my declaration of French nationality and warned me to "guard it carefully" – I am still British.
What dual nationality means, in selfish practical terms, is that I am once again free to roam the 27 EU countries at will. I can live in France without worrying how long I stay and how long I must then stay away from all EU territory before being permitted to return.
An acquaintance recalls another group ceremony, with pre-Covid-19 celebrations at the same London consulate where I sat, socially distanced by a Perspex screen, and discussed the formalities of my gesture with a solitary official. In the dossier, the official handed me a friendly if impersonal letter from President Emmanuel Macron describing France as "proud and happy" to welcome me as a new citizen.
Did I step from the building feeling more French than an hour or so earlier? A little. Less British? Not really; Brexit had already posed a stiff enough test to my sense of national identity. And I still feel more saddened by the outcome of the 2016 referendum than alienated from all those who voted Leave. The impulses of a majority of them had little to do with xenophobia or outright racism and everything to do with a belief – nonsensical as I find it – that "throwing off the shackles of the EU" would smoothly lead to the "Sunlit Uplands", which campaigners had promised. Remainers and Leavers will forever disagree on whether those with uglier motivations were numerous enough to swing the result.
At one of those huge and entirely futile anti-Brexit demonstrations in London, I spotted a banner held by another dual national. Adapted to refer to France and not Belgium, the slogan sums up my feelings precisely: "Fifty per cent British, 50 per cent French, 100 per cent European."
